Rabbit Box Blog

Or, Why my mother doesn’t drive a car

My parents had a very traditional relationship. Dad was the bread-winner and decision-maker; Mom was the homemaker and the power behind the throne. Many people today would find their marriage unfair, but it was typical in our area, and they made it work better than most.

Mom was also famous among her brothers and sisters as the family scaredy-cat. We always found that reputation a little odd, because she was pretty much fearless within her domain. She was the one her sisters came to when they needed help or advice. Our neighbor, Tiss Stroupe (pronounced “Strap”), used to run to our house when a thunderstorm approached; on the few times we weren’t home, Tiss hid in a closet.

We boys knew Mom would face almost anything that could happen at home without blinking. When anyone was hurt and bleeding, she was the Mom who would act quickly and coolly to assess the damage, staunch the bleeding, and decide whether a trip to the doctor was needed.

When I insisted on playing on our back porch by swinging around the corner post, she warned me that if I fell, she would wear me out. 

Sure enough, one day I did fall, landing awkwardly seven or eight feet below. She ran out the back door, down the steps, and to the place where I lay crying. After checking me all over to make sure nothing was broken, she reminded me of what she had told me.

“Didn’t I tell you what I’d do if you kept swinging around that post and fell?” she said with cool anger shining in her eyes just above the relief that I wasn’t killed.

“Yes, you said you’d wear me out,” I said through my tears.

And this meek and gentle woman, called the scaredy-cat by her siblings, proceeded to keep her promise.

Partly because of their prejudiced view of my Mom’s inability to cope, my uncles had never taught her to drive as they had with her sisters. She was the only person of her generation in either hers or my father’s family who could not drive.

“I’m too nervous,” she would say wistfully when people asked her why she hadn’t learned. She had bought into the family lore that she was too emotionally fragile to command machinery.

As we boys grew, the lack of a second driver became a distinct disadvantage. Dad worked third shift when we were young, and it was a real problem to have to wake him up to take us to the doctor or to drive Mom to a school play or weekday church event.

Even though he was quiet and kind by nature, like many veterans of World War II, Dad was a dangerous man to awaken. He came up swinging his fists and yelling even when you woke him at the appointed time. Shaking him out of a sound sleep when his subconscious wasn’t expecting it meant that you were taking your life into your hands. The only possible safe method was to tiptoe to the foot of his bed, stand at arm’s length and gently call him while you shook his big toe. As soon as he roused, you must run for the door or risk being hit while he shouted at you in German. I never knew what the German words meant. I don’t think his Southern Baptist upbringing would have allowed him to tell me if I had asked. But I never thought to ask. It was one thing none of us was curious about.

Maybe Mom decided it would be less fearful to learn to drive than to risk waking Dad in an emergency. Or maybe it was that his calm demeanor during his wakeful hours lured her into a sense of confidence. But for whatever reason, she began to talk about learning to drive. She began to hint about taking driving lessons.

Dad didn’t much like the idea, although he never said no. Instead, he found various reasons to stall her. It would cost too much to sign her up for professional lessons. One of her brothers might volunteer to teach her for free, she countered. But he didn’t like anyone outside the family driving his car. Besides she needed to learn in the car she would be driving. It wouldn’t do to learn some car she would never drive in again. It would probably be a hydramatic, and she would have to learn all over again in our manual transmission Ford.

But she was determined. She frequently reminded him of the advantages of having two licensed drivers in the family.

“I can’t afford two cars,” he would say.

“I don’t think we need another car,” she would counter. “I can drive ours while you are asleep during the day. You’d get more rest because we wouldn’t have to wake you up early to run errands.”

Finally he ran out of excuses.

“Okay,” he said one Sunday afternoon. “I’ll teach you to drive. Boys, go get in the car.”

Understandably, Mom was taken off-guard, both by Dad’s sudden capitulation and his apparent plan to make the first lesson a family affair. 

“Do you think it’s a good idea to have them in the back seat while I’m learning?” Mom asked doubtfully.

“Well, they can’t stay home by themselves, can they?” he answered.

“No, I guess they can’t,” she said, still uncertain about having so many witnesses.

We piled into the back seat. Dad got into the passenger side of the car, where he looked uncomfortable and out-of-place. He was the sort of man who would just as soon stay home if he couldn’t do the driving.

Looking even more out-of-place than Dad did, Mom got in behind the wheel and looked at Dad a little nervously as he handed her the key.

“Couldn’t you start the car and turn it around before I start my first lesson?” she asked.

“No, if you’re going to drive, you need to learn how to start the car and back it out of the driveway,” he insisted. “There won’t be anybody here to turn the car around when you’re running those errands.” His voice already showed a little of his famous “I-told-you-so” tone.

“Well, I guess you’re right,” Mom replied.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” Dad said a little more reassuringly.

“Put in the clutch and take it out of gear,” he said. Mom knew enough from earlier teaching attempts by her brothers to know how to do those preliminary actions, and she fumbled only slightly as she moved the gear lever to neutral.

“Now put the key in the switch and turn it over,” Dad said. Nobody called it the ignition back then.

The engine stirred to life with only a little grinding of the starter gears.

“Let off on the key!” Dad said a little sternly. “You’ll ruin the starter.”

In seconds Mom was sitting in uneasy control of an idling Ford.

“Now what?” she asked, obviously pleased with herself for getting this far.

“Put it in reverse,” Dad said. “Pull it to you and go straight up,” he added, describing how to find reverse in the on-the-column shifter.

“Couldn’t you turn it around so I can start off going forward?” Mom asked one more time.

“No, if you’re going to learn to drive, you need to learn what you’ll have to do when you’re by yourself,” Dad repeated firmly. He was a master of the passive aggressive attack.

“Now ease off on the clutch and give it some gas,” he instructed.

Mom did as he said, and actually managed the process remarkably well considering the pressure she was under and the fact that starting our old Ford in reverse could be challenging even for someone accustomed to a straight-drive.

The car lurched a couple of times and then sped down our driveway. Dad looked right and left over his shoulder to check traffic. Luckily the road in front of our house was dirt in those days, and not heavily traveled. 

“Okay, stop at the end of the ….” Dad never got the chance to finish the sentence. The car backed smoothly out of our drive, across the road, and into the ditch on the other side. It stopped when the bumper came to rest against the far bank. The car jerked as engine choked and died.

Mom and Dad looked at each other. From my vantage point in the back seat, I couldn’t tell whether either one was glaring.

“What’d you do that for?” Dad said quietly, no trace of anger in his voice.

Mom said nothing. She got out of the car and walked to the house. Her last driving lesson was over save a discussion that obviously happened later when we boys were out of hearing. I imagine it was what diplomats would call a frank exchange of views.

But after that day, as far as I know, the subject of Mom driving never came up again.